


The Whore of Dresden job

by loveinadoorway



Category: Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-28
Updated: 2011-07-28
Packaged: 2017-10-21 21:27:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/230033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveinadoorway/pseuds/loveinadoorway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Title: The Whore of Dresden job<br/>Disclaimer: Nothing here belongs to me and if it did, it wouldn’t get shared with you, LOL.<br/>Rating: PG-13<br/>Genre: gen<br/>Spoilers: none<br/>Word Count: ~4481<br/>Characters/Pairings: Eliot, Team Leverage, OCs<br/>Warnings: booze, language, a brothel<br/>Summary: Started out as a drabble over at the LJ community comment_fic, prompt was by LJ user sheryden : Leverage, Eliot/any, Eliot as a small town cop AU – there you have your first paragraph.<br/>LJ user cathrinerose wrote a comment to the drabble: "Then Leverage comes into town to shake things up, and Elliot runs away with the circus" – so of course I had to write another drabble covering that. There you have your last paragraph.<br/>And the middle thing? Well…. That kind of developed organically.<br/>I am an egotistical bitch with an overgrown sense of self-importance, so this is un-beta-ed and hence all the crap you find is mine. I love feedback, pos or neg, though. Especially since this is my first longer Leverage fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Whore of Dresden job

Every day, Eliot Spencer walked the streets of Dresden, Ohio.  
Every day, he saw the faces of people who belonged behind bars, but would never ever be locked up.  
Every day, he said howdy to Judge Malone, who would never allow one of his peers to be put on trial for the things he'd done.  
Every day, he went home with the icy ball of rage in his guts churning and eating away at his soul.  
Every day, he took off his uniform, showered the stink of the day off his body, went to the basement for a few rounds with the punching ball and then had dinner with his wife.  
Every night, he went to sleep beside the woman he had known since high school.  
Every night, he couldn't shake the feeling that he didn't know her at all.  
Every night, he had the same dream, in which he was fighting those people he could not put behind bars during the day, fighting them on the shady side of the law. There was excitement and the rush of adrenaline and every morning he woke with a sense of bitter disappointment.  
Every morning, Eliot Spencer put on his police uniform and ignored the feeling in his gut, because that was how the world worked in Dresden, Ohio.

All his days bled into one and so he did not really expect anything to change on that particular Wednesday morning.  
He’d had another pointless argument with his wife that morning - about his hair, of all things. Why couldn’t he get a decent haircut, yadda yadda. Of course Eliot knew that his long hair was a piss poor excuse for a rebellion, but it was the only thing besides his martial arts training that he had or did because HE wanted it, not because someone else expected it of him. Plus, it wasn’t about the goddamned hair, anyway, was it? It was about him not going anywhere, about his career having died a slow and ugly death because he wouldn’t play by their rules. It was about her not getting the house she thought she deserved, or the car, or anything much besides that. No, this argument definitely was NOT about Eliot’s hair.  
So the hair would stay.

He left the coffee shop with a huge coffee in his hand, black, no sugar, the usual. He paused by the newsstand to take a sip and to check out the headlines. A whole world out there, but nothing ever really happened in Dresden. Well, nothing important, anyway.  
A black car pulled up on the opposite curb. The people getting out made Eliot’s hair stand on end. Two men, one white, one black, two women, a blonde and a brunette, all looking too casual to be true. His cop radar went off big time. Most definitely folks he should be watching, he thought. Might not be a bad idea to give them to understand that this town did have a police presence and that it was neither busy wolfing down donuts, nor sleeping.  
He adjusted the ponytail and gave his cap a little twist as he walked towards the group, all smiles and harmless small town cop welcome.  
“Howdy, folks. New in town? Can I help y’all?”  
“Good morning, officer. Thank you kindly for the offer, but we’re good,” the middle aged guy said to him with a winsome smile.  
Booze on his breath, sad eyes, lines on his face that weren’t from laughter. Bad back story, Eliot thought. He’d always been good at reading people. But it seemed like he had to revise his original assessment. The man didn’t come across as a crook up close. Interesting.  
He merely nodded at them and walked past, wishing them a pleasant day.  
It had been a while since he had gone with his gut feeling on anything. But in this case…  
Eliot entered the license plate number in the data base search as soon as he got back to his office. It came back squeaky clean. Maybe a little bit too squeaky clean, so he started to do a little more research. He called the motel and ran a check on credit card and id details, again without any suspicious result other than there being absolutely no suspicious results. Nothing, not even a parking ticket for any of them.  
Eliot frowned and chewed on his pencil for a few minutes, pondering his options before taking the phone and making a phone call. The kind of phone call a decent cop did not make.  
Could be the end of his career.  
As soon as that thought had formed, he snorted a laugh.  
What fuckin’ career?  
Someone who didn’t play along with the judge and the sheriff had no career breaks in this goddamned town.  
~~~  
Nate was frowning. That cop might be a problem.  
“Hardison, run me a check on one Officer E. Spencer, please.” Good thing the man had worn a name tag on his uniform.  
After a few minutes of furious typing, Hardison said: “Eliot Spencer. Born and raised right here in Dresden, married his high school sweetheart at 20, no commendations, two disciplinary hearings that went nowhere, no sign of him being on the take or anything. Clean, that one. Martial arts expert, teaches kids and women self-defense.”  
“Just our bad luck then, encountering the only honest cop in this corrupt shithole of a town,” Nate said acidly.  
Dresden, Ohio, was at first glance just another small town in the Midwest.  
God’s own country kind of a situation, really. But only if you didn’t start to dig deeper. As soon as you did, the place stank to the high heavens.  
Judge William Malone was the single most corrupt individual Nate had ever encountered – and given his previous and current occupations, that was saying an awful lot. Sheriff Bob Decker wasn’t much better and together, they ran this town as they fucking pleased.  
Their client was a woman named Deirdre Barnes. Her husband Joe had been the deputy sheriff and an honest man. Six months ago, he had been killed on the job. He had parked in an alley to eat a sandwich at night and had been found dead with a bullet hole in his temple in the morning. Papers in a safety deposit box that his wife had found after Joe’s death seemed to indicate that he had found out about the sheriff’s and the judge’s other business matters and the conspicuous absence of an investigation into the deputy’s death confirmed that theory.  
When Deirdre had insisted on a proper investigation and had pushed for results, they had presented a coroner’s report that concluded Joe’s death was a suicide. That then of course cancelled Joe’s life insurance payments and Deirdre and their two kids had to sell the house to pay off the mortgage and the funeral costs and move to Deirdre’s parents as a consequence.  
Contacting the Leverage team was Deirdre’s only option, since she had no money left for an attorney and her chances in a court of law were slim to nil, anyway.  
~~~  
Eliot was staking out the motel.  
If what his old high school buddy Marv had told him about these people was right, then things might get pretty interesting soon. He was reasonably sure the client they were working for was a five foot nine inch redhead who didn’t deserve the bad shit that had happened to her and the kids. And if that was the case, Eliot most definitely was taking a keen interest in coming events.  
Yep, it helped sometimes to not bully the nerd, even if you were the captain of the football team and thus actually expected to bully the computer geeks. Eliot had never thought that physical superiority was anything much to write home about. He just was built that way.  
And so he had actually gotten along very well with the science wunderkind Marv back in the day and still did. Every now and again, they’d meet up for a few beers and it never ceased to amaze Eliot to see his old buddy heading the development department of a huge software corporation and still be basically the same guy he had always been.  
One call to Marv had been enough to discover just what kind of a consultancy Leverage did. Now, Eliot hadn’t actually ASKED what kind of things Marv had done to unearth all that intel, he had just thanked the man, quietly printed out the dossier he received per email and then had gone to his dojo to train, as usual.  
And now he was sitting in his battered pickup, staking out the Greensleeves motel. Eliot shook his head, took a sip of coffee and prepared himself for a long and uncomfortable night. Strangely enough, he felt better than he had in years.  
~~~  
Nate, Hardison and Parker left the motel around midnight.  
Deirdre had told them that the judge kept records in his office of all the bribes he received and the payments he made to shady characters. It wasn’t a ledger, just loose papers, she had said. Easy for him to destroy if he had to, which made it real easy for them to copy. His office safe was old school and Parker was very pleased with the chance to bust it open the good old-fashioned way, just with the help of her perfect hearing and wicked skill.  
Hardison disabled the security system and Nate went inside with Parker. It took her just under 2 minutes to open the old safe. She actually turned and said “ta-daaah” with a flourish, which made Nate chuckle.  
Nate leafed through the papers inside for anything to do with accounting.  
Didn’t take long until he discovered a few loose pages that listed payments, dates and initials or code numbers. He took out the hand scanner that Hardison had given him and went to work.  
“Last page,” Nate whispered to Parker and grinned at her. Damn, but this job was going down very, very smoothly. Just this once, it looked like fast in, fast out seemed a possibility.  
He put the scanner back in its case and turned to hand Parker the documents. She lifted the pile of other stuff they had found them under and held out her hand to Nate.  
Suddenly, a growly voice said behind them: “Now, everybody just freeze and keep their hands where I can see them.”  
Damn, they were busted. And by that country bumpkin of a cop, no less.  
Nate’s brain was working furiously on a cover story, but given that they were standing right in the judge’s office in front of the opened safe, with Parker still holding the stethoscope in her hand, that was damn near impossible.  
They should’ve packed the fake FBI id badges, Nate thought belatedly.  
Hardison’s voice came in over the ear piece, but he had nothing to contribute beyond a string of expletives and the extremely helpful suggestion that they should have packed the goddamned FBI badges.  
The cop looked them over with a curiously appraising expression. His face was calm and the man didn’t seem the least bit nervous, concerned or angry – any of which would have made more sense to Nate that that calm, almost amused appraisal.  
He then looked at the papers in Nate’s hands and smirked, actually smirked.  
“You folks trying to get at Judge Malone, by any chance? Them’s his accounting papers? Sure as hell loads of shit in there, only gonna be real hard to prove,” the cop said in a quiet voice.  
“And even if you can prove anything, it’s gonna be a hell of a job trying to find enough LEVERAGE to bring him down, if you know what I mean.”  
Nate just gaped. Had that cop just put special emphasis on the word leverage? What the hell?  
The cop holstered his gun.  
“But if you folks REALLY want to fuck the judge over, I might just know of a better way. So…” the cop folded his arms in front of his chest and looked at Nate, eyebrow cocked.  
“So… maybe we should go somewhere and talk?” Nate asked tentatively. The cop nodded.  
This was easily the weirdest thing that ever happened to them. It also might just be a godsend, if there truly was not enough incriminating evidence in the accounting. At least at first glance, it looked promising, but the cop certainly sounded like he knew what he was talking about.  
~~~  
They drove back to the motel.  
Sophie opened the door to their suite with a smile, saying: “My, you’re back earl….,” breaking off when she saw Eliot behind them.  
“We… might have found us some assistance,” Nate said with a shrug.  
“Assistance? From a COP?” Sophie sounded as incredulous as if someone had just asked her to babysit their Van Gogh with all the security systems turned off and a getaway car parked in front of the house, engine running.  
Nate casually handed Eliot a beer, took another one from the mini bar for himself and tossed some violently orange soda pop at Hardison. Parker curled up on the easy chair, the rest scattered on the two sofas that were flanking a dilapidated table.  
The cop nodded his thanks and said: “Been doing research on you guys. Know what you do. Guess you be workin’ for Deirdre Barnes, right? Damn rotten affair. Joe was a good man.”  
Nate was dumbfounded. If that man had been able to run research on them and actually got results, he either was much more pc savvy than he would give the cop credit for, or he knew some VERY interesting people.  
“Well, Officer Spencer,...” he started, but was interrupted with a curt “Eliot.”  
“Okay, Eliot, I’m Nate, this is Alec, Parker and Sophie. But then you probably know that already.”  
Eliot nodded.  
“Forgive me for being just a tad suspicious here, but why exactly are you trying to help us?” Sophie said with a frown.  
Eliot took a slow sip of beer while he pondered the answer.  
“Because I’m sick of it all. I’m sick of the shit that goes down in this town, I’m sick of good people getting stolen from, hurt or killed and I’m especially sick of not being able to do anything about that. What kind of a cop am I, if I can’t even protect and serve the people like it says on my fuckin’ car?” He looked at them with desperately angry eyes.  
Sophie had seen the exact same expression on the face of a man she had once loved, right before he had run out to meet his death. She shivered.  
“So, how do you propose we bring down Judge Malone, then?” Hardison asked. “See, this bribe business looks nice, easy and clean to me. All I need to do is find out what the initials and code numbers stand for, follow the money and presto, we got us a way to bring the mark down. Like I said, easy. Clean. Nice.”  
“Only you won’t be able to follow the money, because the bank manager is in on it and there’s nobody clean enough around here you could use to bring the judge down, but me. And I can do jack shit,” Eliot said, eyes still burning with helpless anger.  
“See, in this town, corruption is a way of life. Damn near everybody is on the take and so they all look the other way. You expose the judge, you expose other people in the process, too and so the thing’s gonna get hushed up before you can even count to three.”  
“So you say we can do nothing, because nobody would be interested in the judge’s crookedness?” Sophie asked incredulously.  
“Exactly. But this is also a town full of religious hypocrites. They conveniently ignore all of God’s laws about honesty, other people’s property and righteousness and such, but people are very, very moral where sex is concerned and infidelity or whoring is not acceptable. Well, at least not when you get caught in the act.”  
Eliot paused. It looked like he was having a hard time wrestling with the disgust he felt at telling them about the way the world worked here in Dresden.  
“Okay, so we have to make the judge go astray. How do we do that?” Nate asked.  
“You don’t have to put in a lot of effort there. He likes to visit a certain brothel just outside the county limits. Thursdays at 9 pm, regular as clockwork. He just needs to get caught on film with a hooker and then he’ll be finished.” Eliot took another sip of beer. This might just work.  
“Not so simple. It’s going to take some planning to stage the whole shebang. Especially how and when we expose him is going to be crucial to the entire mission,” Nate said, pacing and gesticulating wildly. His mind was racing with possibilities. This would be a much more complex con that just Hardison doing his computer mojo. Much more interesting, too.  
Hardison looked skeptical, Parker was playing with her stethoscope and Sophie was still frowning.  
“But first things first. First, he has to do the dirty. So, let’s steal a whorehouse!”  
~~~  
“And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication,” Nate said with a flourish as they pulled up in front of the brothel the next morning.  
Eliot looked astonished. “You quote scripture?”  
“Oh yes, our Nate is full of surprises. He actually was in the seminary back in the day, training to be a priest,” Sophie said.  
“Well, Sophie, how is your Whore of Babylon these days, then?”  
“A little rusty, but as long as you keep the beast with seven heads and ten horns away from me, I’ll be right as rain,” Sophie replied with a smile. Nate was not the only one full of surprises on this team.  
Nate was resplendent in full pimp glory, gold chains, ruffles, velvet, the works.  
He strode purposefully into the brothel, spun his yarn and within half an hour, everyone inside believed he owned the place.  
They started to prepare for the evening.  
Hardison installed cameras and microphones in the bar and the room the judge would be led to.  
Parker and Sophie practiced their roles and prepared the judge’s favorite hooker for the night’s entertainment. Fortunately, she hated the judge with a fiery vengeance and immediately agreed to do everything to put the man in as many compromising positions as she possibly could.  
In the meantime, Eliot and Nate were going over the plan for revealing the judge’s behavior to the community at large. They had found the perfect opportunity for maximum exposure in church on Friday afternoon. A missionary was due to show a film and talk about his work in the Amazonas region, collecting donations from the community to continue his work.  
The whole town would be there. Nobody would be able to hush up anything while all his neighbours were watching.  
“Okay, is everybody clear on their job?” Nate finally asked.  
Eliot was nervous, apprehensive, even. The last time he had done something at least remotely like acting had been at the academy, when they had been role-playing police work. Nate had come up with a part for Eliot to play which would ensure that he would not be under any suspicion, while it also would get the neighboring county’s police force on stage with them.  
“Good, we got 3 more hours. Eliot, go change into your uniform and get going. And Hardison, find me some of that dirty money. Deirdre’s kids need a decent home and maybe a college fund.”  
“On it, Nate.”  
~~~  
Sophie was posing as the brothel’s Madame and Parker was tending the bar.  
Hardison sat in the small office monitoring the technology.  
Nate had changed into a business suit and was chatting amicably with one of the ladies, when the door opened and Judge Malone entered.  
On your marks, get set, go.  
Sophie was smooth as always, welcoming the judge, telling him about some changes to the management, reassuring him that apart from that, everything would run just the way he liked it. By the time she was finished with him, the judge was practically purring.  
In the meantime, Parker had poured the judge a whisky without any problem, had even smiled almost charmingly and a few minutes later, the judge and his favorite whore were on their way to their room.  
“Hardison, are you recording?”  
Nate tossed back a whisky. His third? His fourth? Whatever. Sophie glared at him.  
“Yup, Nate, we’re rolling. Perfect image, great sound and… oh my God, someone wash my eyes out with lye. Pervy old bastard!”  
Nate grimaced. For a crook who had actually done time, Hardison could be such a shrinking violet at times. He sighed.  
“Make sure you get it all, in all its perverse glory, Hardison.”  
“Don’t worry, Nate, I’m a pro. And so is she. … Is she EVER!”  
As soon as Nate heard Eliot’s voice in his earpiece saying “not far now, maybe five more minutes”, he signaled to Parker and Sophie and they quickly left the building.  
Hardison came out the back entrance with his equipment, still complaining verbosely about the things he had just seen.  
“How’s the movie coming on?” Nate snapped, cutting the flood of complaints short.  
Hardison held his laptop aloft and said: “We’re still recording. Am I good, or am I good?”  
“You’re good. Now keep it up. Remember, we need the entire show.”  
“You do NOT have to tell me that, man. I already told ya I’m a pro, dammit.”  
~~~  
Eliot was driving towards the brothel, with Sheriff Cooper by his side and two more patrol cars behind him.  
It had been preposterously easy to get his colleagues to cooperate. All it had taken was the hint that there was drug trafficking going on in the whorehouse and the whole police station plus sheriff and deputy were hell bent for leather on their way to the bust of their lifetimes.  
Plus he got a lot of pats on the shoulder for coming to them rather than calling in the feds.  
Eliot didn’t have any problems with the lies and the acting at all – he just felt excited and alive for the first time in ages and he was actually thoroughly enjoying himself.  
Well, he would worry about that later.  
They stormed into the bar, positioned one officer there to watch the clients and hookers hanging out there, while the rest of them checked room after room.  
Eliot made sure he was with the sheriff as Cooper burst into the room Judge Malone was happily fornicating with his favorite whore. The judge wore women’s underwear, a pink lacy number with suspenders and stockings which did nothing for his pasty complexion and flabby thighs and buttocks. Eliot had to work real hard to stifle the laugh welling up in his throat, especially when the judge shrieked in horror.  
Taking the shriek as his cue, Eliot turned to Cooper and whispered urgently: “Sheriff, please, lemme handle this, this could get politically awkward. He’s our judge!”  
Cooper nodded tersely and left the room.  
“C’mon, judge, get dressed, quickly, I’ll get you out of here,” Eliot said.  
The judge grabbed his clothes and quickly put on his pants and shirt.  
“Okay, that’s good enough, let’s get going,” Eliot snapped.  
~~~  
Eliot walked into the church, his wife on his arm. Pretending they still had a marriage, he thought acidly, because there were people around. In front of others, she still called him darling. At home, she didn’t even say his name anymore.  
As they settled on the pew, Eliot realized with a shock that he actually didn’t care anymore, beyond a mild annoyance. And he realized another thing. But that would need some thinking through, before he’d even consider acting on it.  
He had passed Hardison leaving the church as they were coming in. So Eliot assumed that everything was in place and the team would get this show on the road as planned.  
He was excited. And he knew with absolute certainty that he couldn’t go back to the way his life had been before Team Leverage had come to town. So maybe that thing didn’t need as much thinking through as he’d originally assumed after all.  
To avoid having to talk to his wife, Eliot picked up the leaflet talking about the missionary’s project and his many achievements and pretended to read until the parson started his speech.  
“And now, without further ado, we will show the documentary Father Mulcahy brought with him from South America. Gladys, the screen, please.”  
Gladys, the librarian, rolled down the screen and someone in the back started the beamer.  
Nobody in the church was prepared for what then appeared before them.  
All hell broke loose and Judge Malone was utterly destroyed within seconds.  
It was beautiful.  
An hour later, Eliot made a phone call. Possibly the most important call in his life. Definitely the one with the biggest consequences.  
He had no direct reason to make this call. His cover had not been blown and if anything, his involvement in the judge’s “rescue” would probably prove beneficial to his career, if the pat on the shoulder he had received from the sheriff back in the church was any indication.  
Yet he dialed the number. He had no choice.  
~~~  
He walked out of the door without as much as a backward glance.  
He knew it was right - the best decision he had ever made. A chance to get those fuckers he could never get in this life. The fuckers no cop like him could ever get in this life.  
It felt good.  
He tried not to dwell on his wife's open relief when he had told her he'd leave for good. In the end, she had a right to be relieved that this charade they had called 'marriage' was finally ending. God knew Eliot himself was almost stupidly relieved to leave it all behind him.  
He walked away from the house with a spring in his step and a lightness in his soul.  
"Come on man, hurry up," Hardison yelled from the car, holding the door open for him from the inside.  
Eliot quickened his pace until he was not quite running.  
The last remnants of the icy ball in his gut were dissolving when he got in the car.  
"Cops make me itchy," Parker said, frowning at him.  
"Not a cop anymore, sugar," Eliot drawled as he leaned back into the seat and closed his eyes.  
Nope. Not a cop anymore.  
He was part of Team Leverage now.


End file.
